A large body of evidence on the activity of regulatory T (Treg) cells was gathered during the last decade, and a similar number of reviews and opinion papers attempted to integrate the experimental findings. The abundant literature clearly delineates an exciting area of research but also underlines some major controversies. A linear cause–result interpretation of experimental maneuvers often ignores the fact that the activity of Treg cells is orchestrated with the effector T (Teff) cells within an intricate network of physiological (...) immune homeostasis. Every modulation of the activity of the effector (cytotoxic) immune system revolves to affect the activity of regulatory (suppressive) cells through elaborate feedback loops of negative and positive regulation. The lack of IL‐2 production by innate Treg cells makes this cytokine a prime coupler of the effector and suppressive mechanisms. Here we attempt to integrate evidence that delineates the involvement of IL‐2 in primary and secondary feedback loops that regulate the activity of suppressive cells within the elaborate network of physiological immune homeostasis.©2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc BioEssays 30:875–888, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Yarkoni argues that researchers making broad inferences often use impoverished statistical models that fail to include important sources of variation as random effects. We argue, however, that for many common study designs, random effects are inappropriate and insufficient to draw general inferences, as the source of variation is not random, but systematic.

The most plausible of Yarkoni's paths to recovery for psychology is the least radical one: psychologists need truly quantitative methods that exploit the informational power of variance and heterogeneity in multiple variables. If they drop ambitions to explain entire behaviors, they could find a box full of design and econometric tools in the parts of experimental economics that don't ape psychology.

This paper introduces the Spider Vision Framework, a biomimetic approach to AI governance inspired by the dual visual systems of spiders. By integrating focused oversight (technical detail) with systemic awareness (societal context) and grounding both in virtue ethics—particularly prudence, justice, and adaptability—the framework addresses immediate technical risks while accounting for long-term societal implications. Comparative analyses with consequentialist and deontological models underscore virtue ethics’ emphasis on moral character, and the paper proposes pilot studies for empirical validation in healthcare AI and autonomous (...) vehicles. This integrated approach aims to foster an adaptive, ethically robust governance model, balancing precision and breadth to better align AI with the common good. Initial findings suggest a significant improvement in ethical compliance and stakeholder engagement when dual-focus oversight is integrated into existing AI systems. The framework recommends targeted pilot implementations across diverse regulatory environments to ensure robust, context-specific outcomes. (shrink)

This article examines the importance of the historical fall and doctrine of original sin in context of allegorical doctrines of the fall and sin. The article provides a moderate defense of a historic fall by critiquing what I shall dub Allegorical Accounts. Contemporary Allegorical Accounts of the fall and original sin deny that any historical fall of our human ancestors occurred. These accounts also affirm that all individuals require Christ’s atoning work for sin, freely fall into sin, and are not (...) created sinful or determined to fall into sin. I challenge the Allegorical Account. Given any Allegorical Account’s claims about the fall and original sin, I propose a set of jointly inconsistent propositions which I label as Atonement for All, Good Creation, and Time-Gap. If one assumes the Allegorical Account, any two propositions of the set will imply the falsity of the third. However, each of the three propositions is plausible. I examine possible modifications to avoid the inconsistency or conduct damage control—each of these is found wanting. Since these propositions are jointly inconsistent when one assumes an Allegorical Account, the article suggests that non-Allegorical Accounts of the fall and original sin may be theologically more important than recently regarded. (shrink)

Controversy over providing financial incentives to research participants has a long history and remains an issue of contention in both current discussions about research ethics and for institutional review bodies/human research ethics committees which are charged with the responsibility of deciding whether such incentives fall within ethical guidelines. The arguments both for and against financial incentives have been well aired in the literature. A point of agreement for many is that inducement in the form of financial incentive is permissible when (...) the risk of harm to the individual is negligible in terms of degree and probability of occurrence. In the absence of harm to the individual, encouraging more people to participate in research would appear to be a good thing in so far as it will lead to statistically more robust research outcomes, which can then be translated into better healthcare and other practice. Whilst, on the face of it, this position seems highly defensible, I will explore the possibility that it is counterproductive – that is, providing individuals with financial incentives to become research participants may have the unintended outcome of reducing participation rates in some areas of research. In exploring this idea I will draw on empirical findings from the literature on crowding-out – the hypothesis that providing monetary incentives to people can backfire by overall reducing intrinsic motivation, in this instance intrinsic motivation to behave altruistically or undertake civic duties. (shrink)

The dramatic events of the crisis have reignited debates on the independence of central banks and the scope of their mandates. In this article, I contribute to the normative understanding of these developments by discussing John Rawls’s position in debates of the 1950s and 1960s on the independence of the US Federal Reserve. Rawls’s account of the central bank in his property-owning democracy, Democratic Central Banking (DCB), assigns authority over monetary policy directly to the government and prioritizes low unemployment over (...) price stability. I contrast DCB with Central Bank Independence (CBI), which requires that the central bank is independent of the government and pursues low inflation. I evaluate DCB by asking whether justice as fairness requires democratic control of the central bank and argue that it does not. Instead, so I argue, the choice between DCB and CBI should be justified in terms of the difference principle. By reflecting on central banking in a property-owning democracy, I cast new light on the Rawlsian realistic utopia of a just capitalist society, while also investigating democratic objections to today’s independent central banks. (shrink)

In early major works, Cassirer and Schlick differently recast traditional doctrines of the concept and of the relation of concept to intuitive content along the lines of recent epistemological discussions within the exact sciences. In this, they attempted to refashion epistemology by incorporating as its basic principle the notion of functional coordination, the theoretical sciences' own methodological tool for dispensing with the imprecise and unreliable guide of intuitive evidence. Examining their respective reconstructions of the theory of knowledge provides an axis (...) of comparison along which to locate Cassirer's Neo-Kantianism and Schlick's pre-positivist empiricism, and an immediate background of contrast to the subsequent rise of logical empiricism. For in the absence of intuition all our knowledge is without objects and therefore remains entirely empty. (Kant A62/B87) And how awkward is the human mind in diving the nature of things when forsaken by the analogy of what we see and touch directly? (Boltzmann 1895). (shrink)

Principlism aims to provide a framework to help those working in medicine both to identify moral problems and to make decisions about what to do. For it to meet this aim, the principles included within it must express values that all morally serious people share (or ought to share), and there must be no other values that all morally serious people share (or ought to share). This paper challenges the latter of these claims. I will argue that as a descriptive (...) claim about what values morally serious people do in fact share, principlism is inadequate; more principles would be needed to make this claim true. Furthermore, I will argue that while, taken as a claim about what principles we ought to share, principlism could turn out to be correct, it is either unsupported or unable to meet its aims. The only way in which principlists can avoid these problems is to add to the current four principles. (shrink)

Gametes, tissue, and organs can be taken from the dying or dead for reproduction, transplantation, and research. Whole bodies as well as parts can be used for teaching anatomy. While these uses are diverse, they have an ethical consideration in common: the claims of the people whose bodies are used. Is some use permissible only when people have consented to the use, actually wanted the use, would have wanted the use, not opposed the use, or what? The aim of this (...) article is to make progress in answering these questions. Initially I assume knowledge of people’s desires in order to test whether consent is directly required by their rights without worrying about mistaken uses against their wishes. I claim consent is not directly required by people’s rights. If we know people wanted or would want a use, their rights permit the use, but if we know they wanted or would want not to be used, their rights do not permit the use. The knowledge assumption is then dropped and the question becomes how to decide what to do when the wishes of rightholders are not known. I suggest working out what to do when wishes are known and then adjusting, on the basis of whatever evidence there is, for probability and strength of desire. There are other considerations too, for instance about default rules. The key general comment here is that, in setting rules, the costs to rightholders in not getting what they want needs to be taken into account. The final section tries to show that, in setting these rules, mistaken uses are not to be taken as worse than mistaken failure to use. (shrink)

The following notes on the In Pisonem are largely based on the commentary of R. G. M. Nisbet . The references to the speech are by section and line of his text, and where my note is based on one of his I add a reference to the page of his commentary. 1. 20 voltus …, qui sermo quidam tacitus mentis est: ‘thoughts are usually revealed by the face.’ Add to Otto's, Seyffert-Muller's, and N.'s examples: Curtius 8. 6. 22 ‘voltus (...) haud sane securi animi index’, Juv. 9. 18 ff. (shrink)

Postmodern understandings of the god concept, based upon sociological and anthropological insights, support the ontological reality of the god concept. AII such god constructs can be understood as real but human products which come out of a situated Drama of the Holy. The reality quotient of any god concept can be seen as a function of solidarity activities within a society. Social justice concerns are, thus, the best indicators of that reality quotient while divisive, exploitative and oppressive practices in the (...) world tend to desanctify both society and nature thus justify Death of God analyses. Two interrelated solidarity activities are discussed for their efficacy in sanctification of nature and society: 1) situated Dramas of the Holy and, 2) social policies in the political economy. A variety of grand narratives are mentioned, each with differing foundational concepts, with which to institute social justice as we move into the 21st century. (shrink)

We analyze the back-action of nonlinear atomic homodyning measurements on steady-state “macroscopic superpositions” that can be generated in high-Q microwave cavities. We show that a full characterization of the state requires measurements such that the macroscopic superposition is irreversibly destroyed, that is, it cannot be reconstructed by using the scheme that was used to generate it in the first place.

Издание посвящено проблемам образной семантики, которые затрагивают четыре явления - когнитивные модели сравнительных конструкций, метафорические структуры языка, культурно значимая фразеология и поэтический дискурс.

The variety DMM of De Morgan monoids has just four minimal subvarieties. The join-irreducible covers of these atoms in the subvariety lattice of DMM are investigated. One of the two atoms consisting of idempotent algebras has no such cover; the other has just one. The remaining two atoms lack nontrivial idempotent members. They are generated, respectively, by 4-element De Morgan monoids C4 and D4, where C4 is the only nontrivial 0-generated algebra onto which finitely subdirectly irreducible De Morgan monoids may (...) be mapped by noninjective homomorphisms. The homomorphic preimages of C4 within DMM constitute a proper quasivariety, which is shown to have a largest subvariety U. The covers of the variety within U are revealed here. There are just ten of them. In exactly six of these ten varieties, all nontrivial members have C4 as a retract. In the varietal join of those six classes, every subquasivariety is a variety—in fact, every finite subdirectly irreducible algebra is projective. Beyond U, all covers of [or of ] within DMM are discriminator varieties. Of these, we identify infinitely many that are finitely generated, and some that are not. We also prove that there are just 68 minimal quasivarieties of De Morgan monoids. (shrink)

It was shown recently that epimorphisms need not be surjective in a variety K of Heyting algebras, but only one counter-example was exhibited in the literature until now. Here, a continuum of such examples is identified, viz. the variety generated by the Rieger-Nishimura lattice, and all of its (locally finite) subvarieties that contain the original counter-example K . It is known that, whenever a variety of Heyting algebras has finite depth, then it has surjective epimorphisms. In contrast, we show that (...) for every integer $n \geq 2$ , the variety of all Heyting algebras of width at most n has a non-surjective epimorphism. Within the so-called Kuznetsov-Gerčiu variety (i.e., the variety generated by finite linear sums of one-generated Heyting algebras), we describe exactly the subvarieties that have surjective epimorphisms. This yields new positive examples, and an alternative proof of epimorphism surjectivity for all varieties of Gödel algebras. The results settle natural questions about Beth-style definability for a range of intermediate logics. (shrink)

So Pearson. The strange series of hypodochmiacs here and atO.T.1207 ff., with brevis in longo without pause atAj.421 andO.T.1208, seems metrically self-contained, despite their syntactical interdependence (esp.Aj.421–2οὐκέτ' ἄνδρα μὴ | τόνδ' ἴδητ', so that the word-overlap ofοἷονinto iambics in Pearson's text is unlikely.ἑξερῶ μέγαshould therefore be writtenplena scriptura. Thenοἷον οὔτιν' ἁ Τροί|α στρατοῦ…is possible, but the ithyphallic with word-overlap, sometimes found in the syncopated iambics of Aeschylus, is foreign to Sophocles. Divideἐξερῶ μέγα, | οἷον οὔτινα | Τροία…Thenϕίλοι τοῖσδ' ὁμοῦ = (...) οἷον οὔτινα, i.e.δ= hyp., which is not certainly found, and the antistrophe has two syllables extra. (shrink)

Sanskrit text with Hindi verse translation of Aṣṭāvakragītā, work on Vedanta philosophy.

In this paper, a survey of 180 inscriptions in Tamil between 1346 CE and 1400 CE is analysed for its notions and visualization of astral themes present in the epigraphical inscriptions as well as for the calendrical practices implicit in those inscriptions. I demonstrate the rich diversity of calendrical practices employed in this period. Although there are clear local usages, the applied methods of identification show that in several cases methods from other Indian calendrical traditions have also been used. This (...) applies both to the year and the month. In contrast, the use of the weekday is not widely seen in the inscriptions of this region following the local system. The study also clarifies that the inscriptions are a useful documentary source for other astronomical observations such as eclipses and solstices undertaken in southern Indian locations in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. (shrink)

Prior research examining mate expulsion indicates that women are more likely to expel a mate due to deficits in emotional access while men are more likely to expel a mate due to deficits in sexual access. Prior research highlights the importance of accounting for measurement limitations (e.g., the use of incremental vs. forced-choice measures) when assessing attitudes toward sexual and emotional infidelity; Wade & Brown, 2012; Sagarin et al., 2012). The present research uses conjoint analysis, a novel methodology for controlling (...) several limitations of using continuous self-report measures in mate expulsion research. Participants (N = 181; 128 women) recruited from Bucknell University and several psychology recruitment listservs in the US rated 9 profiles that varied in three potential levels of emotional and sexual accessibility. Men were more likely to want to break up with a partner due to sexual accessibility deficits, whereas women were more likely to want to break up due to emotional accessibility deficits. However, regardless of sex, emotional inaccessibility was more likely to produce mate expulsion. These findings are consistent with prior theory and highlight the need to disentangle emotional accessibility into its constituent in-pair benefits. This research also illustrates the utility of conjoint analysis as a statistical tool for studying how humans resolve trade-offs among competing outcomes during romantic decision-making. (shrink)

Originally published in 1957, this book collects together large sections of important tracts from a variety of political documents, particularly those concerned with democracy, communism, Protestantism or Catholicism. The extracts come from a wide range of authors including Bertrand Russell, Karl Marx, John Locke and Pope Pius XII. This book will be of value to anyone seeking an overview of the key political divisions in the late 20th century or who is interested in political theory generally.